Irritated? He Knows How You Feel

John McEnroe, center, known as much for his short temper as his long list of tennis titles, will appear in a series of videos for runners.CreditCreditLaura Barisonzi

By Andrew Adam Newman

Aug. 1, 2013

AS a tennis player, John McEnroe was known as much for his on-court irritability as for his Wimbledon titles, and now a brand has hired him for a campaign about irritation of another sort.

Dove Men+Care, the Unilever brand, promotes its deodorant line, which contains moisturizers, with the tagline “Tough on sweat, not on skin.” To help promote its sponsorship of the New York City Marathon in November, Dove is rolling out three tongue-in-cheek Web videos in which Mr. McEnroe offers what the brand calls “anti-irritation tips” for runners.

“I’m John McEnroe and I know a thing or two about irritation,” he says at the beginning of the videos, in which he addresses irritating situations, like fans ringing cowbells or other runners wearing silly costumes, along with chafing.

The videos are what marketers call branded content, which aims to entertain consumers more than to promote products. The product is not sold overtly, but rather highlighted in an opening “brought to you by” message and a closing product shot accompanied by the text “Running has its irritations — your deodorant shouldn’t be one of them.”

Dove is sponsoring New York’s marathon for the first time. Matthew McCarthy, senior director of deodorants and antiperspirants at Unilever, said marathons were “a huge passion point” for men over 35, to whom the brand is primarily promoted.

The original Dove brand celebrates naturally beautiful women rather than airbrushed, stick-figure supermodels in its long-running “Real Beauty” campaigns. In the same way, Dove Men+Care, which was introduced in 2010, promotes traits like men’s parenting skills over hypermasculine images of men with bulging muscles surrounded by women.

“The Dove Men+Care brand is about bringing real care for real men, and the marathon is a sporting event that real people run in,” Mr. McCarthy said.

A contest promoting the sponsorship will award two coveted spots to run in the marathon — an atypical strategy for brands, which usually provide tickets to be a spectator (like at the Super Bowl) rather than a participant.

Gift bags with samples of the deodorant will be distributed to marathon registrants.

Mr. McEnroe said that although he had never run a marathon, casting him in the videos was logical.

“With me being the irritable type, the product we’re working with made sense,” he said in a telephone interview. “If they can calm me down, they can calm anyone down.”

Mr. McEnroe, 54, now a tennis analyst on television, is remembered as a player for his sometimes profane outbursts at court officials, as in the 1981 match in which he first yelled “You cannot be serious” at a chair umpire. He has often made light of his short fuse in advertisements, including an American Express commercial from 2007. To highlight the credit card’s dispute-resolution services, Mr. McEnroe knocks on the door of an umpire with whom he had disputed a call at the 1985 United States Open — and gives him a hug.

While 43 percent of Americans say they would describe Mr. McEnroe as aggressive and 28 percent as emotional, only 1 percent describe him as either warm or compassionate, according to E-Poll Market Research, a brand and celebrity research firm.

Gerry Philpott, chief executive of E-Poll, lauded Mr. McEnroe for “being very comfortable playing off the bad boy image” in commercials, adding that in the case of the Dove Men+Care videos, some of the negative perceptions of Mr. McEnroe could actually make the videos more memorable.

“People will get a chuckle out of this because they know he’s making fun of himself,” Mr. Philpott said. “It will help to get this message to stick in people’s heads.”

Dove Men+Care, which declined to reveal projected expenditures for the campaign, in 2012 spent $42.3 million on advertising for its range of products, which include body wash, shampoo and shave gel, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

Antiperspirants showed no strain during the recession, with revenue in the category growing by 14 percent from 2007 through 2012, according to Mintel, a market research firm. Unit sales were flat or declined for some of those years, but consumers paid more for newer offerings like so-called clinical strength products, which have higher concentrations of active ingredients and which can cost more than twice as much as standard deodorants.

Research commissioned by Unilever found that 62 percent of men have experienced some irritation from deodorant, and that when it came to choosing a deodorant, a nonirritating formula was the third most important attribute, behind efficacy and scent.

Brian Morrissey, the editor in chief of Digiday, an online publication that covers digital marketing and media, competes in marathons and in 56-mile ultramarathons, so he is no stranger to irritation.

While he said that videos about irritation would resonate with long-distance runners, he doubted that the New York City Marathon competitors who got the deodorant in their swag bags would be applying it on race day.

“Before a marathon, I wouldn’t put on deodorant,” Mr. Morrissey said. “And judging from what I smell out there, I don’t think that many people do.”